


Catch and Release

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4367492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was one person who, to even her surprise at first, Esme allowed to catch her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch and Release

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistresscarlett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresscarlett/gifts).



> In 2007, mistresscarlett asked me for 'femmeslash, Witches or Watch'. Here it is, love; I'm sorry it's taken a while.
> 
> Discworld characters do not belong to me and are not being used here for any financial gain.
> 
> * * *

There was one person who, to even her surprise at first, Esme allowed to catch her.

One person who was the reason that she kept running when she was in her thirties and forties and fifties, albeit slowing down as the years overtook her before her companion did.

They weren’t any of the young lads who had tried when she was a teenager and in her twenties, with their hands full of promises and their hearts and minds in their trousers. No. Oh, no.

She’d made the mistake of one day saying to Gytha, who was cheerfully indifferent towards the distinction between _chaste_ and _chased_ , ‘I don’t see the point.’

‘In a harmless little tumble? No, I don’t suppose _you_ would,’ Gytha had said, and smiled.

(It was that smile that Granny remembered when she’d stopped being Esme and started being Granny, when Gytha had stopped being the young woman with her head in the clouds and settled into her mother-role. Even years upon years later still, when Gytha was Nanny and down to one tooth.

It was that smile, and the promise of knowledge behind it, that had made Esme wonder whether there wasn’t a point after all.)

While Esme had given up even the pretence of running from men in favour of ignoring them unless they needed some sort of witching, Gytha had dedicated considerable hours to calculating exact angles at which to accidentally fall, when she wasn’t just briskly ambling rather than running.

Esme was leaving her early thirties behind; Gytha was straddling the divide between teen and young woman, when she wasn’t straddling young men, at any rate. Theirs was a strictly working relationship, when it wasn’t a flinging things at each other and screeching relationship at any rate.

But then, one misty morning, Gytha changed everything.

 

‘Race you to the Dancers, Esme.’

‘Not likely,’ Esme said, but Gytha was ten paces ahead of her and accelerating.

They wove through the woods, through the fog, the sun attempting to burn through it in places and failing. Esme could hear Gytha somewhere to her left, ahead of her, and then not at all.

She burst through the trees into the clearing and stopped. There was no sign of Gytha, and the fog rolled silently away from the standing stones as if afraid. Perhaps it was.

A soft round shape hit her from behind, knocking her off her feet, rolling her into the lush grass at the foot of one of the stones.

‘Ow, Gytha, what—’

‘Caught you,’ Gytha said, beaming down from where she was sitting on Esme’s stomach.

Esme had felt the hare’s fear in the face of the hounds. This wasn’t it. There was, however, something fluttering inside her.

‘Gytha, get _off_.’

‘No. I caught you.’ Gytha wriggled down, bringing one of her thighs to rest between Esme’s. Her belly was comfortably soft against Esme’s rather flatter one; young Jason was three months old now and could be safely left with his father — for a given value of safely, anyway.

‘This is not the time or the place,’ Esme began firmly, and Gytha rolled her eyes and covered Esme’s mouth with her own. She tasted of twice-steeped tea and one extra sugar. Esme contemplated pushing her away, or possibly turning her into something that could make better use of its tongue.

Before she could make up her mind, though, she realised that Gytha’s tongue was doing something reasonably interesting as it was. She’d always thought this would be wetter, messier, unappealing. But Gytha was wielding all the experience of her years and more.

And Esme—

Esme was kissing her back, with all her inexperience, for once letting Gytha lead her instead of the other way around.

Much to her own surprise.

 

The fog had burnt off. Gytha lounged nonchalantly with her back against one of the nameless Dancers. Esme, having resigned herself to the fact that the grass was going to be damp no matter how she sat on it, had her head in Gytha’s lap.

‘I thought you liked men,’ she said. ‘Not women.’

‘I’ve no idea what gives you the impression that it has to be one or the other,’ Gytha said, stroking Esme’s hair and teasing out the grey streak over her right temple into a single lock. “ _You_ don’t like one or the other. You don’t like _anyone_.’

‘I believe you just provided both of us with evidence to the contrary,’ Esme retorted.

Gytha gave her a very self-satisfied smile. ‘I like to think of myself as an exception.’

‘You know what else is exceptional? Your modesty.’

‘True,’ Gytha agreed with her trademark grin.

Time passed, a little more prosaically than it hitherto had been; Esme left off thinking about what had just happened and got on with making a mental list of people she needed to see and places she needed to be. Gytha kept playing with her hair, putting the grey streak into a braid and then twining it around Esme’s head like a silver coronet.

‘Am I supposed to feel different?’ Esme asked.

‘It’s not a requirement.’

‘You’d think it was, the way people carry on. White sheets and blood and such.’

‘You ain’t _people_ , Esme, you’re a _witch_.’

Esme considered this.

‘All right.’

Gytha beamed at her. ‘That’s my girl.’

‘Gytha Ogg, if you ever call me that again, I shall bite you somewhere very intimate.’

 

It didn’t become any sort of permanent fixture in their lives, except for all the ways that it did.

They had a complicated series of facial expressions that asked everything from _tomorrow night?_ To _it’ll take your mind off the cramps_ to _no, I’m not wearing any knickers_ (the latter almost always Gytha, except for one astonishing incident that was _never talked about ever again whatsoever_ ).

There was the occasional night when they packed Magrat off early and stayed by the fire until it faded to coals, taking in its warmth and each other’s.

Esme kept to her own bed. Gytha methodically married her way through three men’s beds, although they were all her own bed in the end. They never met in one or the other. Indoors never felt quite right.

As the years passed their given names fell away to be replaced by their respective titles. Sometimes those names, on the occasions when they _were_ used, denoted impatience, or annoyance, or a degree of seriousness that couldn’t be conveyed by ‘Nanny’ and ‘Granny’.

But sometimes, running under a full moon or a lazy late-spring sun, their first names meant something that was just for them.

 


End file.
